His chamber was just as it always was, but different in the way it had been before—the way a room feels when something important is about to happen.
The fire was already burning high. Someone, she suspected Elliot, had left wine on the table and then had the discretion to be elsewhere.
She turned to look at Noah.
“Here we are again,” she said.
“Here we are.” He looked at her, at the tartan sash still on her shoulder, the braid Caitlin had spent an hour on, the gown. “Ava.”
“Aye?”
“I love ye,” he said, the way he said everything important: plainly, directly, while looking at her face. “I should say it more. I’m goin’ to say it more.”
She looked at him.
At this man who had taken twenty years of managing everything alone and had, quietly and without ceremony, decided to stop.
“I love ye,” she said. “I have for, ye ken how long. I’ve told ye.”
“Tell me again.”
“Since before I was ready to,” she said. “Since before I kent what to do with it.”
She crossed to him. “Since the night on the roof with the stars, I think. When ye told me ye daenae ken how to be with Esther and asked me to help.” She stopped in front of him. “Ye were honest with me. Ye’ve always been honest with me. Even when it was harder than bein’ easy.”
Something moved in his face. His hand came up to her jaw.
“Ye’re the best thing,” he said. Not a sentence, just that, left open.
The best thing.
She kissed him.
This time, there was nothing left to argue about, no old voice reminding her of the gap between who she was and what this place was, no careful accounting of what she was and wasn’t fit for.
There was only this. His hands in her hair, the warmth of him, the fire behind them, and the particular quality of a man who loves someone and has stopped pretending he doesn’t.
He undid the tartan sash first. Carefully folding it and setting it on the chair.
She found his coat buttons. He found her shoelaces. They handled it efficiently, which made her laugh, and he looked at her with that expression, asking what, and she shook her head.
“We’re very practical,” she said.
“Is that a complaint?”
“Nay.” She pulled him down to her. “It’s one of me favourite things about ye.”
He kissed her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder.
His hands moved with the deliberate, unhurried attention she had observed months ago and still couldn’t entirely resist. She stopped observing and thinking, simply letting herself be here, present, his.
His.
The word settled in her chest without argument.
She pulled him closer, and he came without hesitation, his weight against hers as he put his manhood inside her.
She gasped as he started moving, slowly first and then faster.
